Nick Lewis: The Blog

So today, I was doing some graphics work on my desktop machine when suddenly my speakers made a "bzhagh!" sound followed by a set of clicky noises which came from the CPU. No blue screen of death. Rather, a black screen of eternal damnation. I turned the computer off. And turned it back on.

Death from Fire

The computer appeared to boot back up normally. That is... until it tried to load microsoft Windows. Before windows could even load I heart sparks go off inside my computer's case. Smoke arose. The stench was unbearable. I remained calm and turned everything off.

Michael Angeles' post on creating different looks for different sections by switching body classes and ID's inspired me to write up a related method.

The advantages of this method are that it dynamically builds classes on the basis of vocabulary and term that allow you to have wildy different styles for every node.

This method requires two parts, one snippet in your template.php file, and a special body tag in your page.tpl.php file.

...this being one of them -- where I dream about throwing my laptop off of a 200 foot cliff, and running away to the wild hippy preserve, deep in the Yucatan jungle.

Once there, I would live out the rest of my natural life with my fellow endangered comrades. By day we'd farm for sustenance, while our research staff would busily develop the next generation of dread(with even more nap than before). Conversation, love, and art would be our only entertainment and escape. We'd have little more than the sun, moon, rain, and stars to keep track of time. The songs of birds would be our morning newspaper. And the packs of howler monkeys would be the closest thing we'd have to bloggers. The deep black canopy behind the stars, our only god.

I know, its a trite discovery -- but still, I can't help but wonder: what does it mean?

The growth of Drupal, in terms of book publishing, is on a dramatic increase. Within the last 6 months, there have been more than I can recite off the top of my head. (though Robert Douglass's and David Mercer's come to mind (sorry I don't speak German)). In general, I think this is wonderful thing for our community (with a few reservations).

And no, my problems have nothing to do with vague notions of an "open source spirit" where everything is free to anyone. Friends, I worked 11 hours this Easter Sunday. I actually don't remember the last day I truly had off. No -- my reserverations are not of the idealist sort. Rather, I'd just like to bring up the obvious: Drupal is a rabbit, and paper is a tortoise.

Fellow Drupal consultants and developers: drop what you are doing and read Apple's Human Interface Guidelines right now.

Note: If you've already read the guidelines, you may "free read quietly", or work on homework from other classes.

Lately, RSS reader's "business" folder has been spewing forth a lot of hoopla about myspace.com's success. This particularhoopla takes on the form of a few questions:

1. "Yes myspace is successful, but will they always be successful? What's keeping the competition from crushing them?"
2. "Why did myspace succeed,  while tribes, friendster, and other competition fail?"
3. "Is myspace.com REALLY web 2.0. And if not, does that mean there will be another tech bubble?
4. "How could such a terribly designed application succeed? I mean -- like -- the page doesn't even validate, and they use TABLES. Hello! Like, this isn't 1999. Has Tom heard of standards?"

So I'm going to go ahead and throw my hat into the blogtacular circle of vapid speculation and discussion of myspace.com. 

Ah, chickens -- delicious chickens. Its a timeless truth, however, that not all chickens were born equal. And clearly, the best tasting chickens are those who've been allowed to feed, graze, and socialize on the open range.

Hello world. As some of you may have noted, my proxy self, nicklewis.smartcampaigns.com, went missing nearly a week ago. [pauses, trying to hold in tears] But, today, my dear proxy self was found shivering in a cold, dark, alley in a bad part of town. The blog is now safe at its new home, http://www.nicklewis.org, drinking hot coccoa, and wrapped in a blanket. I haven't asked it for answers yet, but it claims to have been jumped by a pack of sailors. 

I ask that reporters leave us alone. You got your happy ending. Now I can only ask that you respect our privacy. Thank you. 

My dear readers, its time for me to make a confession. Blogging is indeed a self-empowering practice which boosts my self esteem;but I often have no idea what to write about. Thankfully, I occassionaly have readers who ask questions which I can not only answer, but maybe even respond to with a reasonably entertaining blogpost.  Russ from Media Experiment asks one of those questions: